Vanity Has No Part in Email Marketing | iContact

Ever since I started in email marketing, I have heard that open rates are the most important metric. That reminds me of the days when I was in sales where the amount of phone calls made was the most important metric. At the end of the day, the conversion rate is what matters. That is what brings in revenue and keeps the lights on at a company.

Most marketing experts will tell you that 1-2% of cold calls convert into a lead. While this may still hold true for phone sales, there is no similar scenario for email marketing. Yet some marketers are still sending out email “blasts” to as many subscribers as possible, as many times as possible, without realizing that the days of spray and pray marketing are over and have been for quite some time.

The biggest mistake that blasters make is not paying attention to what the “gate keepers” are doing. When I say “gate keepers,” I am referring to both email service providers and subscribers. While an unanswered phone or ignored voicemail will not necessarily garner a negative affect for phone sales, unopened emails or a lack of engagement can be detrimental to your email campaigns. I can go on and on about engagement, but if you want to learn more, read this article.

For the most part, marketers are fixated on how large their subscriber list is or how high an open rate they achieve. That’s like owning a brick and mortar store and having a large number of people walk by the storefront, and then a smaller percentage actually walking in and looking around. Do those numbers matter? NO! The bottom line is revenue – how many of them are actually buying? To stay in business, you need to make a profit. Period.

When applied to email marketing, this fixation on large lists and high open rates can lead to a reliance on vanity metrics. Vanity metrics are numbers that on the surface make you feel good, but do not correlate to what constitutes actual success – reaching revenue targets and making a profit. Vanity metrics can be manipulated and they are misleading.

Don’t obsess about the numbers of passersby. Instead, the focus needs to be on analyzing the flow of your email campaigns and looking at the percentage of conversions. You need to look at how many opens an email has, then how many clicks. This will help you find the CTOR (click to open rate). That’s the number you should focus on and strive to improve. This helps you find out if your subject line and content are both working in harmony and driving subscribers to engage your call to action.

But don’t stop there. Next, you need to analyze what is happening on your landing pages or website. Did you succeed in driving your subscribers to your site, only to quickly drive them away because of friction? Look at the elements of your website and use Google Analytics to track the flow of your visitors. Is each one meeting your expectations? Set up goals in Google Analytics to help you track the flow of your visitors. You can then make adjustments to emails, pages, design elements, and your checkout process to improve your conversions.

Remember: The goal is to guide customers along the buying process so that it ends in a conversion. For that to happen, every step needs to be a good experience for your customers. If not, you will still have your vanity metrics, but may end up losing the sale!